On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 09:42:06PM -0500, Vincent Launchbury wrote: > Greg KH wrote: > > The fact that some people claim that the firmware blobs somehow violate > > the GPLv2 license of the kernel is a claim, not a fact, so please do not > > state it as such. > > Hi Greg, > > Thanks for your reply. > > I think you misunderstood my point though. I wasn't saying that the > firmware violates the GPL, I have no idea whether it does or not. I was > saying that some of the firmware is non-free software, and therefore the > license should include more than just GPL-2. This especially effects > people using ACCEPT_LICENSE to maintain a free system.
Heh, no, it does not, unless your BIOS, and your keyboard firmware, and your mouse firmware are all under a "free" license. The only thing close to this type of machine is the OLPC, and even then, I don't think all the microcode for the box was ever released. So it's a pointless effort. Hint, these firmware blobs do not run on your processor, so they have nothing to do with the license of your "system". > > Also note that the majority of these firmware blobs are now removed > > from the kernel, and are in a separate patckage, so this might be > > totally irrelevant at this point in time. > > This may be true, but the packages in the main tree still contain > non-free firmware. If this is fixed in a later release, then GPL-2 would > be fine for those. Again, no, the GPLv2 covers the license of all of the code you run in the kernel package. > > So please don't state that the Linux kernel is not properly listed as > > the GPLv2, because it is. > > In linux-2.6.31 for example, here are some excerpts from > firmware/WHENCE: > > Regarding the keyspan USB driver: > This firmware may not be modified and may only be used with > Keyspan hardware. > > and the emi26 driver: > This firmware may not be modified and may only be used with the > Emagic EMI 2|6 Audio Interface. And again, you do not run those firmware images on your processor, so the point is moot. And note, _I_ placed those images in the kernel image, after consulting lawyers about this issue, so it's not like I don't know what I am talking about here. > I'm not sure if this git repo is part of a separate package or not, but > it seems the same terms are present: > http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/dwmw2/linux-firmware.git;a=blob;f=WHENCE;h=83d245bee1ec44cbd5c0e1a53a3989c57f675c91;hb=f20b0674534a444ae74239843cac19f72c64912b > > Which is why I think the license should be amended. If I'm mistaken, > please do correct me, but based on my above notes, I believe it should > be updated. Please see above why this is all just fine. thanks, greg k-h
